


Pflaumenbaum, or The Plum

by schemingreader



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 02:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schemingreader/pseuds/schemingreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus is sixteen, and the only other Hogwarts student who has a summer job at Diagon Alley is Severus Snape. Snape is a much more interesting person than Remus realized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pflaumenbaum, or The Plum

  
**_Pflaumenbaum_, or, The Plum**

By Schemingreader

 

"Hullo, Severus."

Snape, who had been reading a paperback, jumped in his chair, looking around quickly and gripping his wand under the table.

"It's just... me," Remus said lamely. What could be less reassuring to Snape than the presence of one of James Potter's and Sirius Black's closest friends? If Snape had known that Remus was also a werewolf he would have hexed him on sight, underage magic regulations be damned.

As it was, Snape's face crinkled into his typical sneer of dislike. Remus felt a stab of regret. The other boy was not so ugly when he was absorbed in his book, taking bites of his sandwich at intervals. He had come to the little park in Diagon Alley, to sit on one of the benches to eat, and had seen Snape. He was the only other person in the park. Magical places were always larger on the inside than on the outside.

Remus felt he could watch Snape all day, the way he picked up his lunch to take a bite and then put it down without eating, so entranced by his reading. It was surprising to see him with a paperback, which had to be a Muggle book. Intense, abstracted—--Remus had felt for a moment that he quite liked him.

"Lupin," Snape said.

"How are you, Severus?" Remus asked politely. He was afraid that Snape would say something like "none of your business" or "what do you care." Instead Snape stared at him for a moment.

"Fine, and you?" he said, softly.

"Very well, thank you. Are you working at Florian Fortesque's this summer?" Snape was wearing the ice cream shop's distinctive pink striped uniform, so this was an exceedingly silly question. Snape did not answer, still staring.

"I'm stocking schoolbooks at Flourish and Blotts," Remus said cheerfully.

"Bully for you," Snape muttered just audibly under his breath.

"Would you care to... may I sit down?" Remus asked.

"It's a free country," Severus said, a bit louder.

"Thank you." Remus said, smiling.

He sat down and unwrapped his own sandwich and took out a bottle of lemonade. Severus had a flask of tea.

"I didn't know you lived in London," Remus said brightly.

"I don't," Severus said.

"Then how are you..." Remus began.

"Though it's really none of your business, I take the Knight Bus in to work every day."

"Oh. I live in..." Remus said

"I know where you live, you prat." Severus said in a low voice.

"Why?"

Severus rolled his eyes. "I thought it might help me avoid you and your little _friends_ when we were on holiday. I see that was a lost cause."

"I'm sorry, Severus, I..." Remus stood up and began to gather his things. Severus stood as well. Remus was surprised to see that he was taller than Snape. Snape had towered over Remus last year, but apparently Remus had caught up. Snape put his hand on Remus' arm.

"Don't be ridiculous. Sit here. Eat your lunch. I have to go back for the lunch rush anyway." Snape began to pack up, quickly.

"Severus, I..."

"You were hoping we could make _friends_. Pity and guilt aren't especially good bases for friendship, Lupin."

"But we have all kinds of things in common." Remus voice trailed off in the face of Snape's piercing gaze.

"I'm not afraid of you, you know," Snape said coldly. "You don't have to reassure me of your good intentions. I'm not a little flower, going to break if you breathe on me."

Remus had been thinking that Snape looked especially vulnerable and weedy in his uniform, his skin pale and his forearms taut as wires.

"I know you _mean well_ Lupin." Snape sneered. His eyes were hooded. Perhaps he was trying to look cynical, but Remus could see another, softer feeling in them. _All these fellows who pretend to be cynical are really secretly, sappily hopeful. Sirius is like that, too,_ he thought.

"Perhaps another time, then, Severus?"

"Perhaps."

Remus watched the other boy's retreating back. At school, Severus had a way of scuttling from place to place. Here he walked with his shoulders back, a sort of bouncing glide. His black hair hit the collar of his pink and white striped ice cream shop uniform, and flopped a little.

"Wait, Severus, you....you left your book," Remus started to say, and let his voice trail off as he realized that he could hold on to the paperback and perhaps have an excuse to talk to the other boy. He looked at the cover. L'ÉTRANGER, Albert Camus. Severus was reading Camus, in French. Damn. Snape read French existentialists in the original. So cool. Maybe it was a little pretentious, reading a book about a completely alienated character with no moral sense.

Remus heart beat in his throat. "Severus Snape" was written on the flyleaf in a slanted, block lettered backhand. _Everything he does is like that: affected, goofy, beautiful, vulnerable, endearing. I like him._

* * *

 

His friends thought it was odd that Remus was going to work in the summer, at all. They thought it was some Muggle thing. Remus wondered why Snape was working. For Remus, it was all because of McGonagall's foresight. She thought having an employer who could write him a reference would help offset the problem of his disability when he looked for work after he left school.

Remus' friends had laughed at him for getting a summer job in a bookshop. "Ooh, they've asked the fox to guard the henhouse!" James laughed.

But Remus knew when he took the job that he wasn't going to get much time to read on the job. Mainly he was lugging boxes of books from the back room and shelving them. True, he could have used magic to levitate the books and make them arrange themselves neatly and alphabetically. There were two reasons why he wasn't allowed to do that. One was the restriction on underage magic. Sixteen-year-old wizards weren't allowed to levitate books out of the stockroom. Also, some of the books were enchanted, and the management had a policy of not using magic to move or shelve them. That, indeed, was why they hired Hogwarts students in the summers. Madame Pince had arranged for Remus to be one of them.

No one seemed to have noticed how Remus' arms and chest were becoming increasingly muscular. Unlike his friends, he barely ever did anything athletic during the school year. It was enough that he had to live through a transformation each month. He was enjoying his new physique. He could lift larger boxes now in early July than he had been able to do at the beginning of June.

He liked to flex his muscles in front of the bathroom mirror when he brushed his teeth. It made him feel silly and shallow. "Chuck, I look like a bloke named Chuck. Or Stan," he said out loud to the empty room.

He started to wear sleeveless vests under his short-sleeved dress shirts. Flourish and Blotts required a tie, and his was made out of some horrid synthetic. His neck smelled of sweat and the stockroom, like stale old newspapers--like his Da when he came home from work. He would get home and sit in the garden in his vest with a glass of orange squash, reading and feeling the sun on his arms. He didn't dare to sit shirtless. It just felt too naked. He had a little more confidence in his body, but not that much.

He wanted to have a tan when he saw James, Sirius and Peter again, he told himself.

_Plus, if Severus really is bent, like everyone says he is _ he thought with that weird excited bubble in his throat, _if he really is bent--like me!---he might like me better with a tan. _

As though Severus was so handsome, himself. Just because Remus liked him didn't mean he couldn't see that Severus wasn't anyone's idea of good looking. Remus wasn't either, or at least he didn't think so. His body was scarred and his face was boring and he didn't think he had much to recommend him.

Anyone who knew about his condition --his curse!-- wouldn't want him.

It was all just a fantasy anyway. It didn't matter. Remus decided he would tell himself that until it was true.

* * *

 

Every day for a week after their first meeting, Remus carried Severus' book with him in his pack up. Finally, after he had nearly given up, he came upon Severus at the same table in the little park.

"Lupin," Snape said.

"Ah, hullo, Severus. You left your book."

Remus had practiced saying this in his head so many times that once he finally said it he blushed.

Snape was also blushing. He looked at the ground, his hair falling forward over his face. He pushed it back impatiently and looked up at Remus.

"All right. Thank you, Lupin," he reached out to take it back. Remus held onto it a little tighter, so that Snape had to tug slightly to get it out of his hand.

"I didn't know you read French, Severus."

"I don't."

"But the book..."

"I made a translation potion."

"On hols?"

Severus looked at him like he was mad.

"What I mean is, what about underage magic?" Remus asked.

"I did it with my Mum," Severus said shortly.

"That's brilliant!" Remus said.

"What, making a potion with my Mum?"

"Well, yes. A-and, a translation potion," Remus said, feeling increasingly foolish.

"Yes, wonderful stuff, magic," Severus mocked. He didn't sound particularly biting though.

"Do you think... could we perhaps eat together, today?" Remus said tentatively.

"All right, Lupin. It's not as though I have anything better to do." Snape's ungracious words were tempered by the softness of his voice.

"Brilliant," Remus said again. _I sound like such an overeager idiot_, he thought. _ Anyway, why am I so excited to eat lunch with him?_ But he was. He sat down with a big grin and offered Snape a little Italian plum. He had brought two every day, just in case.

Snape took the proffered fruit with a small, closed-mouth smile.

"My mum has a tree in the back garden," Remus babbled. "We get these all summer."

Snape held the dark purple fruit to his large nose and inhaled with a slight flare of his nostrils. Remus knew that the fragrance of the fruit was the best part, better even than the sweet purple-black peel, the tart flavor of the pulpy yellow flesh.

"Thank you, Lupin," Snape said with the absurd, affected dignity that Remus found so inexplicably charming. He set the plum down next to his foil-wrapped sandwich. It looked like paste on white bread, but Remus was not going to ask.

They ate their food in silence for a few minutes. Remus tried to stop himself from smiling encouragingly at his sandwich. He wanted to see Snape bite into the plum, but he did not. He palmed the fruit and rose, saying "Excuse me. Good afternoon."

* * *

 

The next day Snape was sitting at the table in the park outside, reading his book and eating, and Remus sat down opposite him without a word.

"Lupin," Snape said, without looking up.

"Hullo, Severus," Remus said, smiling immoderately. "Would you like a tomato? My mum gets a lot of them, starting in July."

"Thank you."

"Also, I have some flowering lemon balm, I didn't know if that might be..."

Snape looked at the flowering herbs in Remus' hand. Remus had wrapped the stems in wet paper toweling and put the whole thing in a plastic bread bag. That was how his mum did it. He supposed it looked very Muggle of him, and felt his face flush.

"Lupin. I am not a _girl_. You don't have to court me."

"I rather think I do," Remus muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Snape said.

"You're just... you're a bit shy and..." Remus stammered.

"You're queer, aren't you, Lupin." Snape said. "That's why you let those horrid boys do whatever they like, even when you think they are wrong. You think they are so open-minded to be your friend, even though you are a poofter."

"It's not like that!" Remus said, aghast. It was exactly like that, and James and Sirius and Peter didn't even know about him liking boys.

"But do you fancy _me_?" Snape said, "That's very odd, don't you think? You might do, but it's quite _perverse_ of you, old thing. It's just proximity, I suppose. I don't think I want to be your convenience shag, Lupin."

"Don't be such a..."

"Such a what, Lupin?" Snape purred.

"Such a bloody ridiculous prat, all the time. You said you were making potions with your mum, well, here are some herbs from our garden. I'm giving them to you because I want us to be friends, all right?"

"But if I'm such a prat..."

"I thought maybe we might talk about Camus, all right? Do you have to... why can't you just..."

Snape was smirking, his dark eyes triumphant. Remus was not going to lose his composure. It was suddenly very important for him to stay calm. There was something just a little too reminiscent of the pull of the moon. Remus didn't usually feel so---angry? But he wasn't angry, exactly. He was breathing hard.

"Oh yes, I can see we are about to have a very _intellectual_ conversation."

"This is why no one can stand you, Snape!" Remus snapped, managing with difficulty not to raise his voice.

"If you can't _stand_ me, then leave me alone. I'm not queer, Lupin, and I'm not interested, all right?"

Suddenly a light went on in Remus' head. "I haven't said that I was interested in you that way. I think... I think you protest too much."

"What?"

"I think you wish I were interested in you, that way. You want me to be."

"No! No, of course I..."

Remus stood. He knew he loomed over Snape. Snape stood up, alarmed.

"Remus, don't..."

"Don't what? Don't what?" Remus said. He could barely get the words out, it felt like his chest was being squeezed. There was no one else in the park, as usual. He grasped Snape's shoulder--he was so slight--and bridged the distance between them. "Don't what?" he repeated. "I'm not going to hurt you, Severus."

Snape shut his eyes. He looked terrified. Remus wanted to kiss him so much.

He reached out and touched Snape's lower lip with his finger. Snape pursed his lips.

"Not like that," Remus said. He touched Snape's thin lip again. Snape made a small squeaky sound, and lunged forward a little, and then stepped back just as quickly, so that they nearly fell over.

"It's all right," Remus said, like he was calming a frightened animal. He looked down into Severus' eyes, and held his face in his hands, the sharp bones of the other boy's jaw in his palms.

His lips under Remus' were so soft. You wouldn't think someone like Snape, who was all bones and angles, could have such a soft mouth. Their tongues touched, and then Remus was licking and tasting the other boy's mouth. It was cool, and sour, and sweet, like a plum.

He didn't expect it, but when they broke their kiss, Severus clung to him. He put his head on Remus' shoulder and sighed.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for [](http://orangenbaum.livejournal.com/profile)[**orangenbaum**](http://orangenbaum.livejournal.com/) for the Lupin/Snape Fantasy Fest of 2006. Thanks to [](http://busaikko.livejournal.com/profile)[**busaikko**](http://busaikko.livejournal.com/) for a very quick and helpful beta-read!


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